A breakthrough butter made from CO2

This novel process converts waste carbon and water into sustainable fats

Spotted: Fats give food flavour, but the fats we use in cooking today come from animals, polluting plantations, or chemicals – all of which face sustainability challenges. Most fat molecules are made up of just three elements – carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. And, because of this, food tech company Savor realised that they could also be made from waste carbon.

The startup takes a source of carbon, such as CO2, and hydrogen, using heat to form these molecules into chains. Oxygen from the air is then added to generate industrial fats and oils – without the need to grow crops or rear dairy cows. The process uses no farmland and a tiny fraction of the water that’s need to create equivalent butters or margarines. The process also has low scale-up costs because it can use existing commercial-scale chemical processes.

Savor has already created a synthetic butter that looks and tastes like the real deal, and the company plans to develop fats for use in milk, ice cream, cheese, manufactured meat, and tropical oils. The company has raised more than $33 million in funding, including from a recent series A funding round led by Synthesis Capital and Bill Gates’ VC firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV).

CEO Kathleen Alexander told Springwise that the next steps for the company are really the first steps, explaining, “We are a very young company and early in our journey, so perhaps the right question would be… what is first for Savor? We are currently working very hard towards commercialisation of our butter. Beyond that, there are lots of other plans and dreams in our fats and oils and reforestation pipeline.”

Written By: Lisa Magloff